Shareholders/Owners Equity Question

[Mike or Penny Novack]

I have to assume that you know something about the principles of double 
entry bookkeeping. If you had correctly done the transfer (debited 
Opening Balances and credited Voting) you should not have changed the 
total for Equity.

What, pray tell, do you have in "Imbalance"?  (something here will 
indicate that you messed up entering a transaction).

Notice that I am speaking the language of debits and credits. GnuCash 
like other accounting packages reverses the left and right columns of 
traditional pen and ink on paper bookkeeping taking by considering 
whether the (normal) balance of an account is debit or credit. You 
transaction to move the the $100 from Opening Balance to Voting should 
have decreased what was in Opening Balance and increased what was in 
Voting.

Michael

PS: Did you make Opening Balance a placeholder account? Why? (you have 
transactions in it, too late)

PSS: You don't need an Opening Balance account. You just needed to set 
your books up the way you wanted (the "chart of accounts" you wanted) 
and then correctly enter the opening transaction. Do NOT use the easy 
start process that GnuCash provides for opening personal books. These 
are the books for a corporate entity, not personal books. This would be 
a lot easier if you:

a) First create the chart of accounts
b) Enter (manually) the books opening transaction. This is usually a 
large split transaction.

Michael




quest46 wrote:

>Thanks for the info!
>
>Following your advice, I tried creating sub-accounts, for “Voting”, “Non-voting”, etc. under “Equity” and then transferring the appropriate amounts, from the “Open Balances” and “Equity” accounts.
>
>For example, “Equity” is designated as a “placeholder” or header account. Yet, it shows a “Total”. For now, let’s say its $100.00.
>
>The “Opening Balances” account (a subdirectory of “Equity”) also shows $100.00.
>
>So, for aesthetic reasons, I created “Voting” and made it a subdirectory of “Opening Balances”.
>
>Then I opened “Voting” and, using today’s date, I transferred, say, $100.00, from “Opening Balances” to “Voting”.
>
>Yet, now, “Voting” shows (100.00) while “Opening Balances” and “Equity” each show 200.00 – which makes no sense to me!
>
>Ideally, in my opinion, “Equity” and “Opening Balances” should show 0.00 and “Voting” should indicate 100.00.
>
>Or am I missing or screwing up something?
>
>Please clarify!
>
>- q
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